Campus Visit Anon

I don't normally do requests, because...well, frankly, because I never actually get requests. But since abdme has asked, I'm happy to elaborate: early in December, I had a phone interview with a Southern Research University--unlike some of my fellow academics, I actually prefer phone interviews. For one thing, you can have them in your bathrobe and bunny slippers. (And yes, I actually own a pair, thanks to my friend/roommate/landlord--though to his credit and mine, they are Killer Bunny Slippers, huge jagged-fanged things that derive from the Rosetta Stone of Nerd Comedy, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I mostly wear them in front of new acquaintances, just to make sure they know they're dealing with a geek-addled eccentric.) For another--and this is more personal--I'm just not that good in interview situations. Apparently I'm very intense. (I know, you're thinking, You? Intense? Get out! But no, it's true.) And such intensity--I get too enthusiastic about whatever it is I'm talking about and just...go off--appears to be off-putting. Also, I'm simultaneously incredibly awkward and self-conscious, so I tend to twist my body into pretzel-like shapes of body-space defensiveness--all told, not a pretty picture. But over the phone, said picture is eliminated, and I come across as breezy and charming. Or so I'm told.

Anyway, it must be true in some sort, because said phone interview led to my being asked about a week later for a campus visit late this month. Details as to what I'll be expected to do are still hazy--though early reports indicate that rather than giving a paper, I'll be expected to teach an upper-division class, probably in Shakespeare. This..is...good. If I shine anywhere in life (a big "if"), it's in front of a class. I get to be the best version of myself: confident, smart, witty, charismatic, charming, entertaining, erudite, and enlightening. I get, in short, to rock. (I know, this sounds megalomaniacal, but my new shrink has insisted that I identify three things that are good about myself every day in an effort to combat my crippling self-loathing, so I'm just building up a repertoire.) And the chance to do Shakespeare makes it all the better--I'll get to recite monologues from memory--get to act, which always seems to wow 'em--and show that I can really, you know, teach. So, hopes are, miraculously enough, high. One never knows what the competition will be like, and I rather expect, given the number of applicants and the fact we're down to the final three, that it will be stiff. But I'm in the running, and it's a free trip to a lovely part of the country, and it's a chance to teach--and that...is always a good thing.